Zingy Rocks My World!

A tricky choice of viewing in tv tonight - Eurovision or Norway v England. Luckily The Hump was first to perform on Eurovision so I watched that then turned over. Great song but it's a grower and not an instant tune. Then it's a ballad and there are 25 more songs to come, so poor Englebert will be forgotten by voting time.

Now it's half time in the football so time to get down with the coolest advertising character since Flat Eric (remember him?) - EDF Energy's loveable Zingy the dancing flame . If you're in the UK you can't fail to have seen him. Here's a reminder though:

Crazily, EDF haven't tried to cash in on all the Zingy love with a range of merchandise yet - they'd make a fortune! Just look for Zingy on Ebay and you'll see the craft world hasn't been slow to grasp the opportunity!
Mrs Gelert Design adores him, so as a surprise I made her a Zingy mug - an opportunity to win brownie points with her indoors and gain more experience with my new dye sublimation printing setup.

Of course, always one to try and exploit a marketing opportunity, and until EDF Energy realise what they're missing, I printed a few more mugs and put them up for sale to see if I couldn't begin to recoup some of the money I've invested in my new printing venture.

So far so good!

He's available on Ebay, and in both my Etsy and Folksy shops. Here's a photo:

Isn't he just the best?

Making my art work for me!

So I wrote a couple of posts recently about how you can find various applications for your design/painting to make it keep working for you rather than being a OOAK piece that you sell and forget. Whether this be as a mug, t-shirt or mousemat, it's a whole new earning opportunity.

Having spent quite some time looking at the companies who offer this service, it occured to me that I could actually just invest in Gelert Design and learn to do it myself. Couldn't I?

It's far from cheap, but as well as creating ranges of my own designs I could surely offer a service to other crafters such as... well, you, maybe! By concentrating on small runs and one-offs at rates that compete with the big boys, this service could even become my main source of income with my existing Gelert Design work becoming something of a side project.

Early days, but I've started my investment in the future by purchasing this rather nifty Ricoh sublimation printer:

Not cheap for an A4 machine and the cost of the sublimation inks is horrendous, but it's too late now - I'm speculating to accumulate. Onwards and upwards!